Panini Takes A Beating With Flawless & Thorpe Relics

This industry of ours has taken a few big blows to the head within the last week.  Its always taking hits, but these kind hurt big time.  When you have an industry that’s based on trust and authenticity its going to happen.

First off, let me say that anyone who purchases a box of cards that costs over $1,200.00 is completely nuts.  I don’t care if you have more money than god, there is no reasoning for this.  The cards found in 2014 Panini Flawless Football are very nice looking, I’ll give them that.  But there is nothing in this product that we really haven’t seen before.  This is just my opinion, and I’m sure there are people out there that strongly disagree.  Slapping a high price on the same old stuff doesn’t make a product innovative.

By now you’ve probably heard about the tiny problem Flawless Football has with the event-used versus game-used swatches.  At first I didn’t think much about it, especially when it was just a couple of players.  Its happened before.  But then the list got longer.  I’m glad Panini is owning up to the problem, but that’s only happening because they got caught.  Event-used relics shouldn’t have been anywhere near a product of this caliber.  What grinds my cookies the most is how fast Panini responded with such accurate numbers.  Its almost as if they knew what they were doing.  If they wanted to play things out, they should have waited a bit to release the info on which cards were effected.  That would have at least made collectors believe Panini was doing some digging to get that info.  Releasing that much highly-detailed information so fast looks like they were documenting it in the first place.  This just shakes the trust all around.  And this is the company buying up all the licenses.  Someone needs to stop turning a blind eye to all those cleared payments.  Cutting corners to help the bottom line isn’t going to fix anything.  Can you really trust anyone?  The simple answer is no.  I wish we could, but in the words of Rocky Balboa “The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.”  We live in a world where you need to question things and look beyond the flashy show.

I usually don’t write a lot of posts like this.  Panini has been very kind to Sports Card Info over the years by supplying boxes to review and including me in their NFL Player of the Day blogger promotion.  But something had to be said.  Even though what I’m saying has already been said before by other collectors.  I suppose another voice can’t hurt.  Things will just blow over though and not much will come of it.  Just like it has for years.  It won’t be long before another incident rises up.

Speaking of another incident, I’d stay away from every single Jim Thorpe baseball relic made from 2005-2014.  Apparently the jersey used to make over 2,000 relic cards never even was in the presence of Mr. Thorpe.  Its sad to see people still spending tons of cash for these cards.  Panini has really taken a beating the last week.

I will always enjoy opening up packs and boxes.  As long as there aren’t too many base cards.  I don’t need meaningless base cards and inserts.  Low numbered parallels and “hits” are what I enjoy.  But sometimes it can really hurt when you see what goes on behind the scenes.  This industry can be like sausage.  You may like to eat it, but you don’t always want to watch it being made.